KRISPR (2023)

3 stars

Miracle Media. Digital. 18th May

Chloe (Ash Maure Felkner) arrives home to find her husband Dr Elijah Roelof (Petrie Willink) with another woman. He chases after her as she has the wrong idea — it’s actually Krispr (or Krispr G4-667 to give her full title) (Sof Puchley), the expensive $100 million clone he has been working on for the last seven years. Willink also scripted this oddly named film and co-directed with Jeremiah JJ Roberts. It is never explained why she is called Krispr – unless I missed that.

He introduces his wife to this childlike adult. Her mind is like a babies but constantly (and very quickly) learning – soaking up knowledge like a sponge. It’s Christmas time and he has brought her home as part of her education. He treats her more like his own child – which understandably annoys his wife, as she desperately wants to start a family and her husband seems to care more about his “creation” than his wife’s feelings and is always too busy with work.

Next day they are going to drive up to the mountains to a family get together for the holidays. He hasn’t told his family he is bringing the clone. It isn’t long before tensions arise. Krispr doesn’t seem to need sleep and watches television and then YouTube videos and starts to come across troubling material. How will this impact how she interacts with the family – of course things start to go off the rails as she becomes more aware and starts to become manipulative. You can probably guess it won’t end well…

From it’s annoying music and it’s drawn out narrative KRISPR is a bit of a slog with lots of talking or shouting at each other – the acting is variable, as it usually is in these low budget affairs, though Puchley is quite effective. It is not explained why if she is a clone, and not some kind of computerised robot, she has this increased capacity for learning. The ending is rushed. If you can be bothered there is a mid credits scene.

Steve Kirkham